


I Don't Need Saving

by startrekkingaroundasgard



Series: Black Widow Bingo 2020 [7]
Category: Black Widow (Movie 2020), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abduction, Angst, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Death Threats, Established Relationship, F/M, Injury, Interrogation, Kidnapping, Knives, Mild Blood, Rescue, Torture, sedatives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:55:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28574865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startrekkingaroundasgard/pseuds/startrekkingaroundasgard
Summary: Natasha is abducted on her anniversary night with Tony. Her kidnappers try to get information out of her about SHIELD secrets but she turns the tables on them long before Tony comes to rescue her.LOMB - M5: Rescue MissionTSBIV - T1: AbductedBWB - E4: Kidnapped
Relationships: Natasha Romanov/Tony Stark
Series: Black Widow Bingo 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906966
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	I Don't Need Saving

The air was sour with the harsh lingering smoke of cigarettes. Even worse than that, the cloying sweetness from electronic substitutes made Natasha grimace. She understood the logic, of course; The links between tobacco and cancer, as well as many other horrible illnesses, were well documented. However, she couldn’t shake the thought that those that made the switch were somehow weaker in will, half-arsing the job of slowly killing themselves.

Pushing those uncomfortable thoughts aside, well aware that they were weighted with the opinions of her old Red Room instructors, Natasha pulled her phone from her bag. Seven miss calls. She raised an eyebrow at that. All were from an unknown number. Interesting. There were very few people in the world capable of bypassing SHIELD’s location tech.

Natasha had been content to ignore the messages until later. She’d been having a lovely evening with the rest of the team. Tony had hired out an entire restaurant for their anniversary party, an upmarket curry palace where, with enough cash, the chefs could be convinced to fry chips for the fussier eaters among the group. Drinks flowed quickly and freely. The lights were low enough to hide his more risqué touches and they were all having a remarkably good time. Sadly, Natasha knew well enough that they never lasted.

After feeling her phone vibrate for the fifth time in as many minutes, Natasha had answered the incoming call at the table. She waited out the silence, assuming that Fury was back on his mind games and unwilling to be the first to break, but it soon became clear that this was something else. That was when the red head excused herself from the table and slunk out to the back to see what was really going on.

Not two seconds later, her phone rang again. Natasha answered immediately, the screen cool against her cheek. “I’m not interested in your games,” she said. “Tell me what you want or stop calling.”

“We want you.”

Natasha fell to her knees, clutching the back of her skull. God, that hurt. The world grew fuzzy and she felt a warm, stickiness on her palm. Blood. Her blood. Forcing the alley back into clarity through little more than sheer will, Natasha clawed herself to her feet, fingertips clinging to the crumbling bricks around her.

They grabbed her from behind, bound her wrists with cable ties before she fought back. They were prepared. Semi professional, at least, then. All fool them, though. Natasha didn’t need her hands to fight. She thrust her weight forward and out of their grip. Using that same momentum, Natasha swung around and kicked her attacker straight into the wall.

She heard the second one coming before she saw him – definitely a him; long, striding gait, heavier footsteps, terrible cologne. Natasha flipped backwards to disable him, the world only spinning slightly more than usual. However, that little wobble was all it took. It destabilised her centre, took her off course, and Natasha only made contact with his shoulder. From his growl, she’d say it hurt but it didn’t knock him out like she’d hoped.

The first was up again, small but strong hands gripped bruisingly around her upper arms. The larger man punched her in the gut, winding her just long enough for them to pierce her neck with a needle. An unnatural coolness spread down her arm and Natasha’s tongue dried out. She recognised the effects immediately. There was no point in wasting her strength to try and fight it.

Instead, she allowed her heavy lashes to drift closed and pictured Tony’s eyes. He had such pretty eyes. She could almost drown in their depths. 

\---

_“Answer me!”_

Natasha spat blood in his face. Refusing to indulge his questioning in Russian, only ever using her native tongue when absolutely necessary, she hissed, “Ask me something interesting and I might.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, that was not the answer he was looking for. Over the past eight hours – she’d tracked the sun across the sky through the cracks in the ceiling overhead – Natasha had told her kidnappers precisely nothing. Her silence had only served to make them more angry. The very fact that she knew that convinced her that these were amateurs, beginners trying to make a name for themselves through brute force.

It was almost funny that they believed a little rough and tumble was enough to make her comply. Compared to what she’d suffered in the past, knives and the threat of a gun at her head were basically foreplay. Natasha smirked to herself, thinking of how heated training sessions with Tony could get. He never liked training with ‘real’ weapons but she insisted – the suit wouldn’t always protect him – and nothing got her heart racing like tangled limbs and sharp blades. Tony wasn’t as strong as the others but he was a fast learner and knew exactly how to provoke a response out of her.

Of course, she wasn’t looking for these two imbeciles to get that sort of heat out of her but it was almost disappointing that they couldn’t even make her scream. Natasha wasn’t reckless, at least not compared to Clint or Steve. She didn’t work through her issues by running head first into danger. She knew, however, that nothing cleared a drug addled mind like a little pain.

That wasn’t really the top of her to-do list, though. Whatever they’d injected her with was wearing off, her body able to metabolise the foreign substance more efficiently than most. Her thoughts were slow coming but clear enough to know that freeing herself from this uncomfortable metal chair should be her next priority.

Her limbs were too heavy, though, like when Tony fell asleep in her lap. There was a chance Natasha could fight her way out but on balance it was a risk she wasn’t willing to take. Amateurs, as she was convinced these were, were unpredictable. Not even a spy of her calibre could predict exactly what they might do if she tried to escape. And in her current state, she wasn’t going to put her life on the line just to prove that she could.

“Tell me where the Sandbox is.”

“Between 61st and 63rd. All the kids love it there.”

Natasha’s lips twitched in a smug smirk, a little too pleased with her retort. Even though she was prepared for the rough slap that followed, it still hurt like a bitch. The man grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her back. It wasn’t quite enough force to tip her over but Natasha threw her weight into the action and braced to hit the concrete ground with a thud.

The harshness of iron coated her tongue as the two men kicked her core. The plastic tie dug into Natasha’s wrist, rubbed uncomfortably at the raw skin, and cleared her mind with their sharp bite. Turning her face into the ground, Natasha tried to protect her skull. The thick layer of dust and dirt cloyed on her skin but there was little else she could do.

By the time they yanked the chair upright again, every inch of her body was bruised. A dark boot mark was already growing on her arm. The dwindling drugs in her system eased the worst of the pain. It didn’t matter, though. While her vision was blurry, Natasha’s mind became clearer with every passing second.

And now, she had a weapon. A shard of scrap metal, grabbed blindly as her kidnappers were too focused taking out their frustrations to really pay attention. Emotion. Such a great distraction. The best. They were too angry to notice the blood dripping from her palms, pooling behind the chair.

It was only a matter of time now.

\---

Natasha toyed with the widest blade on their tray. It was cheap and unbalanced, nothing like her prized knives. She didn’t often use them, hadn’t really favoured them as a weapon since the early days, but that didn’t mean she’d forgotten the best ways to hurt someone with them.

The larger man remained stoic as she trailed the dull edge down his jaw but the younger of the pair was moments away from breaking. Sweat lined his brow and he looked up at Natasha with fear, rather than contempt. The thought of disembowelling him might have once brought her pleasure but now it made her stomach turn.

Dropping the blade back on the tray, Natasha grabbed a smaller, thinner blade – almost like a scalpel – and straddled the nervous man. She pressed the point of the knife into his pulse point and allowed herself a moment to savour the desperate conflict in his eyes; men were always the same. Even when their life was in mortal danger, they still never quite stopped thinking about sex. In fact, the threat often drove them to think about it more and god did it make them so easy to manipulate.

“Now, I think it’s time you answer my questions, don’t you?”

“Don’t tell the bitch anything!”

Natasha was back on her feet in the blink of an eye, the sharp point drawing blood from the crook of his elbow before he even registered his own grunt of pain. Leaning in, her face right up in his, fingers curling around his thick throat, she said sweetly, “Call me a bitch again. See what happens.”

For one beautiful moment, she thought he had the balls to. Sadly, they were as small and withered as his partner’s. Natasha rolled her eyes and returned her attention to the weaker of the pair. He’d give her all the information she wanted now.

Once again toying with a knife off their own torture tray – she’d seen far more impressive selections but, for the nth time, had to remind herself that these were just amateurs – she asked casually, “Who are you working for?”

“Some dick called -”

A giant explosion overhead had Natasha stumbling backwards. A thick cloud of dust filled the air but before it had even cleared Natasha spun around, her body twisting into an attack position. Shifting her grip on the unbalanced blade, she positioned herself between her pathetic kidnappers and their rescuer, ready to fight to keep her prize.

A blue light shone through the smoke. AIM tech. Shit. Of course Hammer was behind this. The spineless idiot never did his own dirty work and relied on stealing tech from other parties in order to make his own useless designs functional.

Convinced that she could take on whichever enforcer he’d sent, Natasha tensed her already tight and sore muscles in preparation for an attack. However, as the dust and smoke cleared, she realised that one would never come.

“You’ve got to be joking. I’m in the middle of an interrogation.”

The suit’s faceplate clicked open and Tony stared blankly at Natasha, his aggression shifting to confusion – and no short amount of relief – when he saw the lackeys tied up in chairs behind her. “You’re not… You’re okay.”

“I’m offended you’d think I wasn’t.” Natasha tucked the weapon into a makeshift pocket in her dress – okay, so a slash in the fabric wasn’t technically a pocket but it held the knife regardless – then sighed. “Why are you here?”

He frowned. “Tash, you were drugged and kidnapped straight off the street. During our anniversary meal.”

“I know. I was there.” It was a touching gesture, tracing her location and coming all this way to rescue her but it was entirely unnecessary. Making a point of reminding him, Natasha said, “I don’t need saving, Stark.”

“Obviously.”

For all that Natasha could endure, she was pretty much hopeless when Tony pouted like that. She rolled her eyes and beckoned her finger. Tony responded instantly, practically leaping out the suit. He slid his arms around her waist, pulled her close against his body and kissed her with a surprising passion.

Stiffness turned to heat as Natasha laced her fingers through his dark, messy hair and tugged just harshly enough to elicit a gorgeous moan. All that adrenaline in her system brought her body to life, and every touch was like sparks dancing over her bruised skin. Tony was gentle – he’d frowned at the dark marks but, sensibly, said nothing – however his desire was obvious.

Behind, on of her kidnappers-come-prisoners groaned. “Can you go back to hitting me?”

She winked at Tony then turned and flung the knife in the same fluid moment. It landed right between his legs, pinning his trousers down. Tony’s arms were still curled around her hips as she warned the man not to speak again, lest he lose one of his precious tiny balls, then returned her attention to her gallant non-rescuer.

“I should probably finish this up. There’s a Quinjet on the way?”

Tony nodded. “Didn’t know what shape you’d be in. Didn’t wanna risk flying you back myself. Clearly, I shouldn’t have worried.”

“It’s sweet that you did, Tones.” Natasha cupped his cheek, the stubble a humbling tell that he hadn’t slept or shaved since she’d vanished, and smiled softly. “Bath later? I could do with a nice long soak.”

“I can give you a nice long something.”

She rolled her eyes and pressed a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth. Turning back to her prisoners, it was clear they hoped that she’d go easy on them now that there was someone – someone very important to her – watching every move. If only they knew the truth. Around Tony, Natasha’s heart might melt but that never interfered with her work. They had information she needed and nothing, not even the presence of her love, would stop her from getting it.


End file.
